An Open-Source and Autonomous Temperature Sensor Generator Verified With 64 Instances in SkyWater 130 nm for Comprehensive Design Space Exploration

This letter presents an open-source framework for autonomous generation of tapeout-ready temperature sensors. This framework uses a leakage-based digital temperature sensor design as the template. A cell-based design methodology is employed to allow full synthesizability and compatibility with computer-aided designs (CADs) flow and advanced technology nodes. Furthermore, the generator automates the design flow end-to-end in Python and supports designing completely with open-source CAD tools. Verified with 64 instances in SkyWater 130 nm, the generator also enables low-effort silicon-proven design space exploration that unveils the characteristics of leakage-based digital temperature sensors, with the most efficient one achieving 9.7 pJ $\cdot \text{K}^{2}$ FoM, −0.67/0.74 °C 3 ${\sigma }$ inaccuracy, 130-nW power, and 24-mK resolution. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the world’s first open-source silicon-proven generator for temperature sensors.